Scientific information on mistletoe therapy

On these pages you will find a current overview of scientific studies on the clinical application of mistletoe therapy for cancer. We address physicians, scientists, journalists, representatives from politics, self-administration and health insurance companies as well as interested students and patients who want ot inform about the current state of clinical research and important clinical observations based on the summaries of the original literature. 

In the last few decades, research on mistletoe therapy in oncology has become considerably more dynamic, so that today we can rely on a growing number of solid scientific papers, regarding the areas drug safety, quality of life, combination with other therapies and clinical evidence (overall survival, tumour response). This resulted in current meta-analyses and reviews, clinical studies, studies from health services research and case reports and also preclinical studies with examinations of the pharmacological constituents and mode of action are discussed in detaill.

Meanwhile mistletoe therapy as an add-on to conventional cancer therapies has become incorporated into various oncological guidelines – we will report on the current status.

All of the information pages have been compiled and edited according to scientific criteria. They do not contain any kind of advertising for any preparations or companies.

Complementary cancer therapies are common. In Europe up to 80 percent of cancer patients use complementary therapies (8, 9, 10, 11, 12), mostly herbal remedies [1]; in German-speaking Central Europe the most common are mistletoe extracts (Viscum album L., VAE) [6, 7]. Up to 62 percent of patients use mistletoe therapy [13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19]. 

The individual preparations are described in thethe sections "Information for patients" and "Information for doctors".

Mistletoe therapy was proposed for and introduced into cancer therapy in 1920 by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman, the founders of Anthroposophic medicine. Since then there have been numerous studies on the influence of mistletoe extracts on tumour growth.

 

Last update: February 22nd, 2023/AT1

 

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